God's Plan?

Does God have a plan for us?

According to the Bible, yes. Everything that has ever occurred, or ever will, is part of his master plan. Including war, disease, genocide, bigotry, and all the other evils of the world. He planned all of it from the moment of creation.

The fall of Lucifer and his host was no surprise, as it was inevitable. The people who now worship Satan are part of God's plan, paying homage to the darker side of his plans. That's right, devil worship is part of God's plan! If it wasn't, there are only two explanations that it exists: God didn't plan anything, or there is no god to make any plans.

I have expressed this sentiment to theists in conversations about religion, and it flummoxes them. I don't know why, they (mostly) believe in God's infallible plan for everything, so they should accept that this is part of it. However, they get bent out of shape when I mention that the plan isn't all benevolent.

I mention the fact that the Bible states that God wishes for everyone to worship him, and obey his every whim, but he has created those who will not. Why would an egotistical megalomaniac would pre-condemn any group that he demands be obedient and worshipful? It's part of the plan, I guess.

Does that mean that we are all acting according to this divine script? Devil-worshippers, warmongers, gays, atheists, righteous bigots, hypocrites, the infirm, and everyone else playing their part in a grand play that can't be strayed from? I don't think so, personally. I believe in free will, and I believe in no deities.

I strongly believe in being your own person, and working toward improving life for yourself and those around you. I will mention that there is a growing number of scientists and science-minded people who believe that the universe is acting in a manner that resembles a predetermined path. This doesn't put God into science, though the plan part is kinda there.

In a predeterministic universe, everything follows a set path that cannot be strayed from, much like God's plan, but more like a complex chain reaction with no one overseeing the experiment. I can at least acknowledge that a predeterministic universe is plausible, but I don't personally put stock into it. Otherwise, this rant would have been inevitable, like in the God's plan model.

In conclusion, God's plan contains evils, and therefore isn't omnibenevolent. I can't believe in a plan like that, and no one that uses logical thinking shouldn't either.

Another Year Passes

Another year passes me by. I grow older and gain some wisdom. It's been a crazy year since my last birthday. It's very soon, and may have passed by the time some of you read this. Life has been a ridiculous ride the last couple years, having the perfectly ordered life I had come to a sudden stop, leading down this scary and enthralling series of cataclysms that I have stitched into the fabric of my life. I see that it's a harsh world, worth the apathy I want to show for it, yet there is something that keeps me interested in the world and it's issues.

I don't know why I continue to hope for a sudden shift in society towards intelligence and critical thinking and evaluation become the norm, mostly I understand that it's essentially futile in the way that you extinguish a fire with kerosene, but I keep on hoping for that change. If there were a chance to show people how to evolve  beyond the bronze and iron age myths that have led to the atrocities that fill our history books for the last 2000 years or so, I would gladly exert as much energy as I could muster to help shape the minds of my fellow humans into insightful minds aware of the larger scale effects of their actions both individually and to/for other people.

If humanity could cast down this selfish method of survival, and adopt a selfless or generous way of living to improve the lives of all humans, I bet there are amazing things could be accomplished by us. I bet we could find a better way to maintain infrastructure and improve the engineering and construction of it to reduce the necessity for repair. From there, we could restructure the way we travel to be safer and clean, reducing both accidents and pollution with a robotic self-drive car that's electric, and it can charge via induction through the road safely into a coil on the car that charges the battery of the vehicle or run it completely without a battery by utilizing the energy directly without storing it.

After improving local transportation, we could address larger scale transport via mag-Lev rails that run in near vacuum tubes to reduce drag and increase the speed which our commodities can travel at hundreds of miles per hour to and from anywhere on a landmass to anywhere else. Getting across oceans will also eventually be via mag-Lev, but that's a project that makes the Chunnel (look it up) seem like a dig in a primary school sandbox. Air travel will be outmoded and slower than the mag-Lev system, which will be run by electricity not H2O5 or other types of jet fuels that create vapor trails across the sky.

With these fundamental paradigms now shifted to a safer, faster, and exceptionally cleaner way, we can establish a more stable economy based on things that have a static value and will always be worth what it is originally measured at. It will take a while to get to economy through the transition, but because there won't be as high a demand for oil and coal, the price for each will eventually stabilize and cost less than it has in about 15-20 years. (That statement is purely speculative, as I cannot predict the values that items will have when a consensus is reached during the transition from failing economics to the aforementioned framework.)

We then need to have EVERY nation dismantle their WMD arsenals, which can be used constructively as drive components for interplanetary travel. If that method of propulsion is adopted, it'll have to be used at a safe distance from our atmosphere, but will be faster than any chemical rockets or ion drives we could ever produce.

It's such a simple plan, elegant in a way. However, overcoming the opposition and getting everyone running with the idea is the hardest part. Everything else will seriously fall into place after that Herculean task has been summited and people really start working toward the improvement of our species and planet, looking toward the future instead of stressing on the present. I do weep for us, though, for we are still just stupid monkeys that are reactionary and selfish by nature. We can't progress until that is quelled and social awareness replaces it.

So as I continue to get older, year after year, I see the state of the world declining further and further into a chaos that we created for ourselves. The political atmosphere is boiling at the fever pitch, war threatens to ravage society and will destroy many more unsuspecting people in the years to come. Rich people will be capable of evading harm, but the townsfolk will die for their homes against any enemy. I just want this to be the year that something changes for the better. I want that to be the wish I'm granted, but I won't hold my breath.

Suckers and Clever People

It really amazes me that so many people invest so much of their thoughts and money into fairy tales. I know it really shouldn't, because people are very easily manipulated. I just hang my head in sorrow that most of the people I know are still incapable of seeing that there are explanations based in science that cover a good deal of the mysteries of the universe, and some deity didn't do it. We have been searching for the answers since humans were capable of thinking about things beyond just survival. Early man didn't have the tools to test the world around him, so a lot was chalked up to spirits or gods, and the rituals to appease these entities came with it. However, we have been improving upon the knowledge that started with primitive humanity, explaining the things which were inexplicable previously, and proving the natural causes of things once thought to be magical.

To me, it seems like a great many years ago in almost every tribe around the world, there was a conniving individual who didn't want to work like the rest of the tribe yet wanted to reap the benefits of the work itself. This individual claimed to know things that explained what the rest could not, and made up these mystical forces which only he/she knew how to appease. This individual would tell the tribe what it needed to give in order to keep these forces happy with the tribe, and that would end up being this individual's cut for being the conduit between the tribe and the mystical. Knowing that the mystical was really imagined, the swindler could enjoy the fruits of its tribe's labor and never have to lift a finger to actually gather any resources or defend the tribe from attack.

Now, this is just my opinion on how the whole religion thing got started, but that's because I'm basing my idea on the people who run churches now. All swindlers who live fat off the toils of those who work hard to eek out a meager existence themselves. I could be making a faulty parallel, but I know that people are pretty much the same as they have always been. Easily manipulated people get preyed on by those who think they are clever, and the clever ones either get enough suckers to sustain their scams or they fail and get replaced by another. History is rife with stories of clever people and suckers, with leaders and followers.

This is really how I see humanity, and I sigh when I look around. We start with the same ability to learn about the world, to become clever, to lead instead of follow. Somewhere along the way, though, most just stop trying to be great and allow others to propagandize them into submission. Religion, politics, and other traditions cause us to be lulled into a state of apathy, where the leaders think they're clever enough to keep screwing us, and all of us that are forced to follow just lay back and allow it to happen because the majority of us are the very suckers that believe the lies that are disseminated from them.

How do we fix it? How do we, the majority, the followers, change the way our leaders rule? How do we get the suckers to realize they're being screwed, and ally them to the betterment of the one world/life that we have?

Those are the big questions, and the answers aren't easily found. I have some thoughts on the matter, but they're unrealistic, because of paradigm shift necessary is beyond the grasp of a great portion of humanity due to the petty nature of all people (myself included). I would like to see the answers you come up with, and let's try to make the viable ones reality.

Back From Hiatus, To a Certain Extent

I'm back on the Internets, having been on a shorter than normal hiatus from access to a computer. Typically, I am known to spend months away from any internet access because I still don't own a computer, even though I am very computer literate. It's nice having a roommate that allows me to occasionally commandeer the magic Internets machine, but I don't utilize that to my advantage nearly as often as I probably should.

I have been spending a great deal of time travelling between Mexico and southern California, as I live in both regions about equal amounts of time. It's really kind of awesome getting to immerse myself in the culture of a foreign society, and the Mexican culture is a rich one, if slightly bogged down by the immense amount of religious fervor the people down there have. The predominant denomination is Catholicism, as it is in most Spanish speaking countries in the world, though there are several other groups of Christian sects represented in the areas I travel through. An interesting development recently, though, is a seemingly sudden influx of Islamic Mexicans in the major cities like Tijuana. This is really kind of humorous to me, as it isn't something a great deal of Americans (myself included) would expect to see. There are a couple neighborhoods that have larger percentages of Muslims now than Christians, and the change in the population seemed to be nearly instantaneous in the last few years. I have been flitting back and forth for almost a year now, and it's been a great learning experience for me. 

Many of my personal friends ask me what it's like down south, as most are also Americans who haven't spent much time in Mexico. "It's really not that different than the U. S., except there's more Spanish being spoken and the water can kill you," I reply, with a laugh. And, it really isn't dramatically different. The police are just as crooked, the rich subjugate the poor, religion runs rampant in the populace, and you can get robbed just as easily any time of day if you aren't observant. Just like everywhere I have lived in the U. S. 

I haven't really gone into the deepest parts of Mexico, yet, Rosarito is where I live when I'm down there, but I eventually plan on going to some of the Aztec and Mayan ruins to see the amazing architecture that those civilizations built before the "Western Civilizations" erased the empires with disease and guns. It fills me with awe and wonder to think that most of the work was done without the use of the wheel, because most of the terrain where the monolithic structures were erected were not conducive to rolling wheels through. Jungle and mountain landscapes were easier to walk through, and so the wheel wasn't as great a tool for the purpose of transportation as it was in the Old World. Not to say it wasn't used for other things, pulleys were very likely a crucial component to getting large stones from the ground to the higher places within the buildings that they were needed. (In the case of the Mayans, the wheel was also where they put their calendars, as it really didn't have many uses; I joke about that with my roommate in Rosarito, because he knows a great deal more about the history of Mexico than I do, and we laugh.)

The thing that is really the most inconvenient about travelling back and forth is really the border crossing itself. The waits are usually insufferably long, plagued with vendors and beggars that target anyone that dresses even remotely nice (like a collared shirt of any kind, even a tacky polo shirt or a collared sweater, seriously, and I'm not really any better off than the beggars themselves as I am also nearly penniless), the obnoxious people in the lines also waiting to cross that cut into a lane that seems to be moving faster but isn't, and of course lastly, the inhospitable border patrol agents that seem to find new ways to make the line move slower than a 3-toed sloth crossing the road. I swear that they do it intentionally, it's like they really want everyone to spend a minimum of 3 hours waiting to taste the sweet air of freedom. That's not to include the time they spend searching vehicles, they get a bye for that, but most days, the agents just lag and don't search more that 10% of the vehicles crossing. They appear to lag for no reason at all the majority of the time. They're worse than the DMV and Health and Human Services COMBINED in terms of expedience and attitude.

I am just glad that I don't cross everyday, and crossing south is a breeze, normally the Federales don't even stop you unless your vehicle is loaded down with a lot of stuff. Even then, they usually just ask for your registration and peer through the windows to vaguely see what weighs so much, and send you on your way. No sonar pillars, no IR tags, no facial-recognition cameras, and no gigantic X-Ray death machines radiating everything in your vehicle on the southbound side; instead a standard stoplight weight sensor, a tollbooth style gate, and some speed-bumps, easy-peesy.

Enough about that, though. It's starting to depress me. I hope to be posting more regularly in the near future, and I have a bunch of ideas for the next few posts on this blog, as well as a possible redux of the appearance soon, to make it more visually pleasing. Any suggestions will be considered, and probably implemented if they pertain to readability or format issues specifically, I want this to be easy for you to enjoy. Suggestions on topics will require me doing some research, and may not get priority, but if you want to see something, let me know and I'll try my best to accommodate. 

And as always, thanks for reading. Here's something extra for those of you who have been anticipating this as much as I have.

Venture Bros. is making a triumphant return after 2 year hiatus.

God Vs. Science 1

Well, you knew it was only a matter of time before I weighed in on the most heated debate in Midwest School Board curriculum setting meeting rooms and public hearings related to it. So ready yourselves, and I'll try to power through it without getting obnoxious.

First, I found a #Psychiatry study that proposed an interesting premise, though finding any summarizations that remained untouched by bias was difficult, but I think I found one. Either way, upon reading the various different synapses, I got the impression that they gathered 159 subjects of varying age and religiosity, and all diagnosed with some variant of depression. The subjects were essentially rated on a scale of 1-10 in terms of belief, and then rated on a similar gradient for severity of their diagnosis. It seems that those with a high amount of faith tend to be more receptive to this specific treatment than those who are more disillusioned about magic. I don't know what to make of it, so I'll post the results of the study, and also a link to a peer-reviewed site that has the short form of the findings and processes.

"RESULTS: Belief in God was significantly higher among treatment responders than non-responders F(1,114)=4.81, p<.05. Higher levels of belief were also associated with greater reductions in depression (r=.21, p<.05) and self-harm (r=.24, p<.01), and greater improvements in psychological well-being (r=.19, p<.05) over course of treatment. Belief remained correlated with changes in depression and self-harm after controlling for age and gender. Perceived treatment credibility/expectancy, but not emotional regulation or community support, mediated relationships between belief in God and reductions in depression. No variables mediated relationships to other outcomes. Religious affiliation was also associated with treatment credibility/expectancy but not treatment outcomes." -
Faith aids Psychiatric treatment of depression?

It's weird to see any kind of credit given to faith being constructive to the human experience, right? Especially in a peer-reviewed journal. even if it's not a really accurate type of experiment. However, now that religion has had it's short moment in the sun, I must attempt to drown it in torrential storms of #logic and #morality that will flood that news for 40 days and 40 nights, because this next study is amazing news for the morality debaters.

#Frans de Waal,
a prominent primatologist, recently completed a long-term study on chimpanzees and bonobos that explored their capacity to display morality. Understanding, without any outside entity bestowing the knowledge of, what was right and wrong to do.
"For example, Lody, a bonobo in the Milwaukee County Zoo, bit the hand -- apparently accidentally -- of a veterinarian who was feeding him vitamin pills.
'Hearing a crunching sound, Lody looked up, seemingly surprised, and released the hand minus a digit,' de Waal said. 'Days later the vet revisited the zoo and held up her bandaged left hand. Lody looked at the hand and retreated to a distant corner of the enclosure where he held his head down and wrapped his arms around himself, signs of both grief and guilt.
And here's the amazing part. About 15 years later the vet returned to the zoo and was standing among a crowd of visitors when Lody recognized her and rushed over. He tried to see her left hand, which was hidden behind the railing. The vet lifted up her incomplete hand and Lody looked at it, then at the vet's face, then back at the hand again.'"That's right, a lower primate understanding that they did something wrong, and felt bad about it, and bore the guilt for at least 15 years afterwards. How much of it came from some deity claiming to be the source of all morality? None, and the study continues...
The chimpanzees and bonobos also display empathy for the less fortunate in their troops, mothers will take in orphaned young, thievery is punished, and other amazingly moral-like mechanisms are in place in these species. There's so much more, but I provided the link and I don't want to spoil the best part.
Primates answer God and morals debate!

Now that I have provided scientists that have straddled either side of this issue, the time has come to weigh in myself, I suppose. Those of you who know me  already know where I stand on this debate, and won't be disappointed by my vote. I have to go with science, the evidence is still in favor of it actually existing and doing useful things, unlike God. I was really surprised to even find any real scientists entertaining the idea that God affected any kind of treatments since the last batch of #prayerasmedicine experiments that pretty much resolved that issue. If that study didn't get the point across, then I refer you to the #PAcouple prays baby to death instead of getting it medical treatment, PART 2!!! Meaning they failed to have that work before, in 2009, had a child die from a totally curable illness that God was powerless against. The parents got a smack on the hand, charged with "Unintentional Manslaughter" for the first instance of this. Now that it's happened again, to the same family AGAIN, and another child of theirs died AGAIN, and their prayers failed AGAIN, these people and EVERY member of the congregation they are members of should be arrested and tried as accomplices and hazards to public safety, as well as intentional murderers that allow defenseless children die from something that could have been treated by science instead of faith.

There it is, the first of an inevitably long series of #GodVs.Science articles that I will probably end up writing for the sheer amusement of reading the source materials.

This article uses excerpts from outside materials, and is intended to be used for educational and satirical purposes only, any infringement is strictly accidental, and will be noted in future revisions if any action is brought forward. All sources cited and linked, except the smartest family in PA, but you can Google them later.

The Silver Lining on the Global Storm Cloud

There's an ominous storm a-brewing in the distance, over yonder. Tensions run higher than ever, and the fever-pitch inches ever closer to the breaking point. The possibility of global war is very real, but it can be avoided if we the people of the world work toward real peace and set aside our cultural differences for a while.

The nations of the world are all beginning to awaken from the nightmare of unjust oppression, wanting to really create a life filled with actual peace and happiness. There is civil war and revolution in the Middle East, there is unrest in Africa, posturing in the Koreas, protests in a large percentage of the rest of the world. The people want change, they want to all stand as equals on a global scale, not to be oppressed by corrupt governments.

This is a great time to be alive, with all this going on, not knowing which country is going to bomb which, or which government is going to needlessly destroy its own citizens and infrastructure to display its waning power. As the global economies falter, and the world realizes that the big players are not such great business partners, war will come, and nations that are prepared for it will at least hold for a while. The U. S. will try to "spread democracy" to more resource-rich (oil, namely) countries to try keeping the price of it high for the world, while the oil companies continue to line their pockets. This will continue until the entire world comes to realize that petroleum backed money holds no value when there's no more petrol, and that inevitability draws nearer everyday. When it does, what will back the moneys of the world? Would it be possible to return to the gold standard?

Muammar Gaddafi was in the process of switching Libya's monetary system back, and away from the U. S. backed petrol dollar before he was removed from office, but we all know how that played out. I'm not saying he was a benevolent leader to his people, but he knew that it would be better to re-establish gold-backed finances (because oil won't be around forever) than to kowtow to the U. S. and the failing petrol dollar. It makes sense, but we'll never know if it would have worked. 

China is being surprisingly patient with the U. S.'s continual stalemate on it's own budgeting issues and failure to pay down the loans that have only grown larger in the last few years instead of shrinking. It's only matter of time until one side declares war over the issue, and both sides will lose more than either side could possibly gain. It is a frightening thing to have looming in the foreseeable future, and may never come to pass, but it's better to err on the side of caution than to be ruined in a state of false complacency. 

If a war breaks out between the Koreas, then the U. S, will back South Korea, and China may or may not back the North (they are contractually obligated, but if N. K. is flexing beyond logical necessity, they'd be smart to stay out of it). If China and the U. S. get involved, then the proxy war from the 1950's will start all over again, this time having nuclear armament on three sides of the conflict. With that possible scenario, and the willingness of Kim Jong Un to push the button, a nuclear exchange is almost guaranteed, and that would spell disaster for the targets, as well as the entire planet's ecosystem. The radiation would render the immediate targets uninhabitable, the area miles around as well, and the fallout would affect the environment for hundreds of miles in every direction. Weather patterns would severely shift, which would probably ruin agriculture on a wide scale, causing starvation in a way not seen in many places since the early 1800's. There would be a great deal of cooling if there were enough fallout, but that is really dependent on the amount of missiles that manage to avoid the defenses and actually hit their targets. 

I don't want to panic anyone, but these issues are serious. I know that as intelligent as we claim to be, there is a better way to resolve the global unrest and inequities, but I fear that the herd mentality may cause us to stampede into extinction and the destruction of all the surface dwelling organisms because we can't play nice.

So, how can we fix it? The question on everyone's lips, it seems. Not an easy fix, and not all parties involved are going to be affected equally, because the parties that are the larger parts of the issues will have to put more effort into reducing their parts. 

My proposal:

• Place the global economy on a static commodity that the value is fair stable, gold is a good choice, being as the amount of it doesn't diminish when we use it.
• Either completely disarm the entire nuclear compliment of every nation on Earth, or have all of them committed to help build something that will benefit humanity instead of destroying it. I like the Orion Project, personally, because of the additional benefit of exploring space in a greater capacity becomes realistic again. 
• Find common ground with the leaders of the nations that are not on the friendliest of terms with yours, learn about how they see the world and really take interest in helping them become a part of the global age.
• Elect people who will actually strive to improve the lives of the citizens of their respective nations, if elections aren't an option, then protest until the demands of the people are met. Do not allow tyranny to take root anywhere, stamp it out and burn it at the root.
• Separate religion from all politics. The politics of religion are hate, oppression, and seclusion from those outside of the ideals of the faith. Religion is the enemy of reason, it will poison any effort to establish a global dialog of peace.

• Bring education and infrastructure to places that need it. A great deal of people in Africa and Asia are starving and illiterate because the only way to get food is either listen to some religious sermon and surrender to the church, or to hunt animals that are equally likely to either escape or kill you. Bring irrigation and farming equipment to them, teach them to read, and don't pollute them with unnecessary dogmas until you teach them to think critically about every aspect of a presented idea.
• Redistribute global wealth to equalize the playing field for nations that are struggling to be world players. A reduction of super-conglomerates like Monsanto into smaller companies that each have someone that is accountable for the actions of the companies is essential in assuring equal standing for all global players.

These are my suggestions for trying to improve the living situation of the one world we have. Until we learn to play nice with our own species and maintain the only world we can verify sustains life, we shouldn't consider anything beyond ours as a high priority issue.
It's going to take all of us working together to ensure we don't destroy the most precious thing we have, and that thing is life.

Enjoy this kind of article? Want to see more? Follow The Ranting! on Google+ 
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/108874034068351089258/108874034068351089258

Beer! A Small Taste of My Upcoming Class

Sweet, delicious beer, the drink of the ages, as much a part of human existence as wheat. Mainly because beer couldn't really be made until there was grain, which required agriculture, which is literally why humanity isn't still scraping by on what few berries and fruits that grew in the areas near each band of hunter/gatherer people. A serious population spike caused resources to become even more scarce than the changing climate was already making things for those post-Neanderthal Sapiens.

They needed to find something better to sustain their ever-growing numbers, or they might end up like the recently extincted cousins they seriously out-bred and out-smarted not all that many generations ago (compared to the periods of Ice that had also dissipated relatively recently). 

You have to imagine that the one who figured out that the grass could be eaten was probably not the one who got to pass on his genes. He (or she  ) was probably starving because the alphas were taking a larger percentage of the dwindling hauls which left the ones lower in tribal status with little or nothing afterward. At some point, one member of the hypothetical tribe my story starts with was so starved that he/she would be dead in only a few short hours if they didn't try something. Withered and hardly capable of crawling, a patch of grass finally gets near enough to make it to our ancient ancestor's mouth, though the crawl sapped what little stamina they could even muster, almost assuredly dead now, our not so fit relation tries to make a final faceful of the only thing near enough to resemble false hope waiting to reveal the immense disappointment and failure that must lie anxiously waiting to regale in another foolish creature dying because it didn't have the strength to pluck a couple blades of sweet survival. This time was a last second victory for the frail Sapien with the seed pod in his mouth. 

As time went by, the tribe got good at growing mostly the seed bearing grasses, and were healthy enough to break an aurochs so as to help the tribe move the soil in such a way that it left the choicest soil ready to grow more grass. With a solid 2/3 of the food that the tribe eats grown all around, they could start focusing their attention to bigger and better things, like irrigation and free standing buildings, as well  as diversifying the plants they were able to grow reliably, starting to take shape as the urban dwellers of their late ancestry. 

Finally, one day a pitcher with grapes is found, smelling like nothing humanity had experienced to greatly, so instead of tossing it away, one of them decides to eat some. Euphoria unlike anything he had ever conceived possible. So he shares with the people closest to him, and amazed to see similar reactions in them. So at that moment, he decided that he must learn the secret of its magic, able make that feeling  on a regular basis.

After a few seasons of trying, also got a grain solution to cause the same effect as the fruit. AND beer had made it's first appearance in the human saga, true wines following about the same time. Now civilization was truly ready to drink away the troubles that would beset it into the modern era. It spread forth to the furthest tribes and soon all of humanity was blotting out the terrible memories of living in the #StoneAge. As time passed the ability to make it got easier, becoming more entwined with the tribes as they became more powerful in numbers and started to kill themselves over a land that they shared for generations. After each day of fighting, came a night of equally intense drinking in memory of the brothers lost. So the symbiosis grows deeper still. This wondrous discovery has been a shaping force in how we arrived where we are now.  The demand for it is still so deeply human that to turn away from this tool of change would be like devolving back to a cave dwelling Neanderthal.  http://skl.sh/14OTlxX

People Who Believe Crazier Things Than Religion, or Damn Close

It's a wonderful night to make fun of conspiracy theorists, especially the ones who are guests on #CoasttoCoastAM, the radio show whose current and former hosts entertain some of the most ridiculous people who make claims that would cause religion to be almost verifiable by comparison. Not only do they condone the perpetuation of pseudosciences and extreme conspiracy suspicion about everything you can imagine.

Alien abductees, remote viewers, "high-clearance rogue agents," ghost hunters, hollow-earth theorists, and that's just one week worth of guests. I can only laugh at the silly premises these people assert as factual event that they were witness to (though they usually end up contradicting themselves by saying they weren't actually present). It never fails to amaze me that #GeorgeNoori can dig up these ludicrous hacks that all hallucinated their way into believing they lived through some sort of supernatural/paranormal experience which either renders them helpless or somehow causes them some kind of injury (mostly to the brain, I'm pretty sure). Seriously, I would love to see the #CoasttoCoastAM loonies take on an equal number of #fundamentalist_theists over which mental illness should reign supreme.

Seriously, the world needs to have this epic spectacle of delusional mayhem, everyday, in a stadium, to the death, of all involved in either ideology.  Who wouldn't enjoy that amazingly efficient way of cleaning out the gene pool? Really, who could think that would be inhumane? 

There would be dancing in the streets as the rational minded people finally could live without having to injure themselves from excessive face-palming. There would be nearly total peace on the planet, and the way of peer-reviewed studies and general neutrality would dominate our societal model, potentially leading to a great boom of technological acceleration in every discipline (especially in stem-cell research and cloning of limbs and organs, you know, the taboo and immoral sciences?) and we would also have more area  to place windmills and solar panels, reducing the need to use fossil fuels, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which will eventually lead to a decline in the slow annual temperature increases. 

This idea could seriously save the Earth, but we all know it could never go down like I outlined. It doesn't mean I can't dream, though.

Believers in crazy ideologies that lack evidence 

of legitimacy

                  It would be the battle of the ages! 
                              Just imagine it.
                              Save the World!

Can We Make it to a Nearby Star Yet?

How long would it take for humanity to colonize a planet in a nearby star system? With our current level of technology and available materials, and hypothetically choosing Barnard's Star (as it is the closest star to us that remotely similar to our sun), which is 6+ light years away from us, estimated travel time would be around 12,000 years with the fastest propulsion we can muster, and that's only if we can use the gravity wells around the Jovian planets to increase the ship's velocity beyond what we could normally reach (New Horizons will be travelling at about 15km/s when it finally crosses the orbit of Pluto), and we'd need to keep accelerating to approximately 10x that to keep our itinerary of 12,000 years. There are other drive technologies that have been tested on extremely small scale, but no full scale tests have been attempted.

The #OrionDrive could get us there in either 1330 years or 133 years (to Alpha Centauri, according to Dr. Freeman Dyson's calculations in his paper "Interstellar Transport," Physics Today, Oct. 1968 p.41-45; reasonable conjecture to add 50% to it, as the distance is 6ly not 4ly) depending on the design we used. The larger one would be ideal, being as its top velocity is about 0.1 light speed, which compared to the other options available is fast. Now that is approaching a reasonable amount of time, on the order of 5-8 generations, given we can accumulate enough fuel to maintain for that long. It would require a megaton of Deuterium to detonate at a rate of once every 100 seconds, for about 200 years, possibly only the first half of that, but even that is an obscene amout of fuel to accrue. It could be possible to find more deuterium along the way, but that will increase travel time and make other supplies diminish during the mining (for lack of a better word).

#SolarSails are another option, though in many ways is far more limited because it relies on photons to accelerate, and as we all know, photons disperse more quickly the further away from the source you travel. One workaround is building a high-power photon emitter as part of the sail rigging, and keep it in reserve until the nearest natural sources become to weak to continue being efficient. With ideal materials, sail size, and course (one that optimizes the #Oberth effect, as described earlier), the craft can cruise at about 69.6 km/s, which is not even close to what the #OrionDrive is capable of, but requires almost infinitely less fuel to operate. But now were back into the 1000's of years of travel time, though food and water are seriously the biggest concern, with outside forces being the next biggest threat to the ship and crew.

So, there are the options we have available to us with the technology we have today. In the future, we may figure out what is necessary to achieve faster than light travel, using propulsion like the Alcubierre Metric Tensor drive and then the length of time it would take to arrive would seem instantaneous. However, being as technologically castrated as we are, we must either discover the right mathematics or physical materials, or use one of the other methods covered previously.

Alas, we are not likely to set sail for the stars unless something threatens to destroy Earth entirely, given we detect it early enough to actually set an escape plan into motion. Until that time, we should make the best of the time we are here.

Sources:
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=915 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

All materials in this article are meant to be used in an educational manner, any similarity to other articles/videos/pamphlets/etc. is strictly coincidental, no animals were harmed in the production of this article.

Where Is Your Personal God?

I have looked myself for the possibilty of some kind of deity. My family has a fair amount of religion, my grandfather being a Southern Baptist preacher(or minister? Maybe reverend? I never know which denomination calls them which title) and every member of the generation prior to me were all deeply involved with every aspect of running a church and being model fundamentalists. I came along and the indoctrination started from birth, practically. I thought the stories were fun, but never believed that any of the tales could be remotely true. I asked why God wanted to do such terrible things to us if He loved us, which never wound up with a satisfactory explanation. I decided that if there were no logical reasons for it, then I didn't need it in my life. I spent the first decade of my memorable life trying to understand the people who were supposed to be my family, knowing that alienation was soon going to cause me to move in with other relatives, searching for the feeling they called God, and never finding it in the places that others claimed to experience it.

As I grew older, I read more and more, studying the human condition as best I could in a poorly funded public library with books 35 years out of date. Eventually I stumbled upon hallucinogens, and found the feeling that so eluded me during my youth. The only difference was that I didn't find God or have any religious experience while tripping, and was fully conscious of the fact that I was hallucinating throughout that entire experience. It was the final proof I needed to temper my resolve in non-belief, I never wasted my time looking for something that isn't there again. I had found a way to feel the same mind-blowing awe that others felt by "communing with God," and I could control it, learning what it must be like to live with such heavy mental and emotional castration tainting every aspect of life in believers.

I am glad that I can at least put myself in the shoes of someone with untreated schizophrenia that is capable of living among hordes of similar patients. It worries me, however, because I remember the horrible things these ill people are capable of in order to maintain the illusion that they're disease is saving them from their inevitable, and hopefully sudden, end.

The quest to find my personal God led me down the path of actual understanding and wisdom. I didn't find any deity, I found the chemistry that makes people think a deity is there.

http://skl.sh/ZOpqwR

It Has Begun!

http://skl.sh/ZOpqwRWelcome, dear readers. This is my first actual blog, on an actual blog site. Forgive me if I don't have a set theme or regular schedule yet.

What an exciting thought... a platform for me to really let my ideas flow, with all of you to read the depravity firsthand.

Now, to something of substance...  I want to talk about the impending doom that awaits us all. We're all going to die, every single one of us will push daisies. Maybe not now, except those that literally did right now, but we'll definitely be worm food before we realize.  Nothing can save us, no deity will even care (if any exist) that we died.  Whatever fate we meet, it won't end well for us. Religious warfare, nuclear disasters, failing governments, asteroids, gamma ray bursts, earthquakes, tsunamis, pestilences, and more that I can't even imagine yet.

I want to comfort you, but I'll be dead, too. Rotting away to dust and soil, feeding the worms, other scavengers and the corpseweeds, starting the chain anew. It's the order of the natural world, everything ends up eaten by something. The delusion that many share called God won't help, a side-effect of being imaginary. When those poor deluded fools meet their end, they too shall be reincarnated as worm castings and grass. Heaven indeed, wouldn't you agree?

I know that death is an antithetical way to begin my blog, but to quote Smashing Pumpkins, "The end is the beginning is the end."

So,until next time, thanks for reading.